Life After Mother: Have a Heart for What’s Inherited

One of my mother’s friends was featured on a TV show about hoarding. To this day, if you try to persuade her to part with so much (or so little) as a years-old mail-order catalog, be prepared for a passionate argument. Her home came to the attention of the local fire department, which had to intercede for fire-safety reasons, which brought her to the attention of a TV news crew. She explained her living habits to a TV interviewer with, “I’m the queen of procrastinators,” although I believe my mother would have given her stiff competition for that title.

On the opposite end of the spectrum may be the family that lived next door to my mother for decades. After the couple died, their daughter threw what looked like the entire contents of the home into a giant dumpster and hauled it all away, even though the home’s contents were far from hoarder-house trashiness. Even if the daughter had a cash register for a heart, you’d think she’d value her inheritance more than that.  

I fall between these two extremes, as I suppose most people do. We love our material possessions and find happiness in them, despite all admonishments not to. What our possessions mean for our hearts and financial wealth depends on what our families have built and what we leave or don’t leave for our heirs. I think one reason my mother was so reluctant to make any decisions about disposing of her possessions was because she wanted to leave the hard part to me.

When a family’s property is appraised, the value of jewelry, art, furniture and household possessions is included when totaling up the worth of the estate. The downside to that can come when that wealth may need to be turned into cash. As Cate Blanchett’s character complained in the film Blue Jasmine, “You buy jewelry and art because you think it’s a good investment, but when you try to sell it, no one wants it. You end up practically giving it away.” Lead with your heart, though, and you may suffer the level of trauma a hoarder experiences when the fire department insists a hoarder house be made fire-safe.

Selling possessions for cash simply depends on finding the right buyer. A friend of mine was fond of saying, you can sell anything — you just have to sell it to the right person. The likelihood of finding that right person, though, may rise and fall erratically. VHS tapes were treasured in the 1980s but now you may not be able to give them away — and even to trash them, they must be trashed as e-waste. Record collections of vinyl LPs and 45s were valuable until the 1990s, then became worthless as “everybody” dumped their collections in favor of CDs. Then CDs were dumped for streaming and burning and whatever high-tech systems came into style. Now old-fashioned vinyl is valuable again, and so are CDs.

Right now I’m looking for someone who’s interested in my mother’s antique dolls and toys, her sewing remnants, some extra eyeglasses. Even if there’s little to be gained in terms of financial wealth, at least I won’t be trashing my inheritance.